I posted this as a comment on another diary here, but I thought about it and decided it would make a diary itself. In response to a commentator who complained that the Democratic sit-in was theatre to support bad laws that take due process rights away (managed to hit a couple of FOX News Channel talking points there):
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You are aware, of course, the entire point of the protest was to point out Republican hypocrisy.
They control the House of Representatives. What they are afraid of is holding a vote. They don’t want to be on record as supporting criminals and terrorists obtaining firearms.
In addition, they will allow no votes on any bill filed by a Democrat unless a majority of Republicans support the bill. Real staunch defenders of democracy there.
They also support the no-fly list. It was created under President George W. Bush’s administration.
If they support a secret list that prohibits freedom of travel (a constitutional right) that one cannot challenge in court (the actual definition of due process, not what the NRA claims it is), yet allow terrorists and criminals to buy firearms, they are massive hypocrites.
If the Republican and National Rifle Association argument is the no-fly list is a secret list, then there is a simple solution to that: allow a person to challenge the government’s including that person on the list (that is due process).
They want both issues: selling firearms to anyone, and a secret list to deny your right to travel without due process.
Representative Lewis said that he fought for the right to vote in the Sixties, but didn’t think he would have to continue to do so in his sixties.
As a firearm owner myself (a single-shot shotgun), I have no issue with proper registration of firearms. Though I am not a member of the NRA (and would never be so since they are lobbyists for the firearms industry; they left behind their gun safety role when Wayne LaPierre became spokesman back in the Seventies), I have no opposition to registration (or more preferably titling) firearms.
The League of American Wheelmen and the American Automobile Association fought court cases for thirty years on the right to travel argument, claiming cars exactly the way NRA claims firearms now (no registration, licensing and tests unconstitutional, &c). As the death toll mounted, after the 1930’s no significant right to travel case ever came up again on cars, and cars became the most regulated and restricted right we have. (Contrary to what the NRA says, cars were not viewed from the 1890’s to the 1930’s as a privilege, they were viewed as an absolute right.)
The history of the Automobile as an orphaned right can be found here.
www.constitution.org/...
You will find this quite an eye-opening document if you read it, the history of how the car went from an absolute right that could not be infringed to the most regulated aspect of our society with registrations, licenses, police, tests, inspections, &c.
Even the DC v Heller case did not call the II Amendment an absolute right (despite the NRA’s claims), and the militia clause of the II Amendment they so like to claim is non-operative actually is: The militia is defined in the main body of the Constitution.
No social change occurs overnight; the Civil Rights Act did not abolish de facto Jim Crow treatment for many years. The fight to bring sensible gun safety laws will be just as hard and fraught with setbacks and misdirections as was bringing automobile carnage under control, or asserting equality for African-Americans, or the right to vote for women, or any other cause worth fighting for.
[Edited to correct the name of the League of American Wheelmen. Of interest, the Wright Brothers were members of the organisation. It was originally founded as a bicycle and velocipede organisation, both for comradeship and to fight laws aimed at banning bicycles and velocipedes. There is a blog that talks about the organisation: www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/...]